THE country’s ruling party has dominated politics since
modern Tanzania’s formation in 1964, but the fallout from the nomination for
its presidential flag bearer has kicked up some dust, shaking up a race that
was shaping up to be another coronation for the power holders.

Tanzania’s four main opposition parties chose
ex-prime minister Edward Lowassa as a joint presidential candidate Tuesday,
three months ahead of a general election scheduled for October 25.

The deep-pocketed Lowassa, 61, was the east
African country’s prime minister between 2005 and 2008, when he resigned over
corruption allegations, charges he denied.

He defected last week from the ruling Chama Cha
Mapinduzi (CCM) party to join the opposition Chadema party, reserving some
choice words for his former camp.

He will run for the top post for Chadema, as
well as the Civic United Front (CUF), NCCR-Mageuzi and the National League for
Democracy (NLD).

Lowassa had joined the race earlier this month
to run as the CCM’s presidential candidate, where he was seen as a frontrunner
among 42 candidates, but lost out to government minister John Magufuli.

Following his defeat, Lowassa claimed the ruling
party was “infested with leaders who are dictators, undemocratic and
surrounded with greedy power mongers.”

The four parties will also field joint candidates
for parliamentary and council seats.

“Ours is the coalition of victory. We are
out to take over from CCM,” Chadema national chairman Freeman Mbowe told a
meeting of the party.

“Our party’s central committee nominated
Lowassa to run for president last week, and the decision was endorsed by the
national congress.”

President Jakaya Kikwete cannot stand again
after serving the two term limit.
Tanzania is one of the few countries in Africa where incumbents have not tried to remove term limits. Neighbouring Uganda scrapped them in 2005, and Rwanda is also making moves to do so.

But Lowassa’s nomination was at the expense of
Chadema’s former presumed flagbearer, Willibrod Slaa, who was sent on
“leave”, according to Tanzanian English language daily The Citizen.

Mbowe said Slaa had not backed Lowassa’s pick
and with Chadema saying “no one is bigger than the party”, the paper reported, it suggests it was an
acrimonious parting of ways.

Slaa has yet to speak on the rapid turn of
events, and has skipped a number of Chadema events in the last few weeks, but
he will have been aghast at how he has been cast aside for the new man, and a
former CCM stalwart at that whom his party liked to portray as the epitome of corruption.

But it is in keeping with African opposition politics,
where often desperate attempts to dislodge a dominant party leave the
putative candidates on the sidelines, many who have nurtured their parties
through lean times.

Many times, the new banner bearer is often a
former ruling party member.

In 2002 the long reign of the Kenya African
National Union (Kanu) came to an end after the opposition coalition dislodged Daniel
arap Moi’s protégé, Uhuru Kenyatta.

The elevation of Kenyatta over other perceived
frontrunners in Kanu saw a flurry of political realignments that led to the
emergence of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), allowing Mwai Kibaki a landslide
win against the party that had led for nearly four decades since the country’s
independence.

Kibaki had been a former rank-and-file member of
Kanu and once forecast the party would not be toppled for decades.

In Senegal, Macky Sall in 2008 founded his own
party, which four years later saw him defeat incumbent Abdoulaye Wade in two
rounds, after snagging the backing of the other opposition leaders.

A long-time member of the ruling PDS party, Sall
had been Wade’s prime minister for three years to 2007, but the two fell out
after it was perceived that the president was grooming his son to take over.

In Nigeria, president Muhammadu Buhari only came
to power on the ticket of a coalition that dethroned the ruling People’s
Democratic Party (PDP) in March.

Buhari, a former military ruler, tried his
electoral luck three times before, but repeatedly came up empty.

But it was the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), an
alliance of the three biggest opposition party, which saw him finally clinch
the elusive presidency. The APC coalition, a conservative-leaning grouping, had only
existed for two years, with its unitary goal being to better the PDP.

Notably, the losing ruling party candidates in Senegal,
Nigeria and Kenya both conceded early, a rare event on the continent. But it
would be difficult to foresee a CCM loss in Tanzania, the party is too
entrenched and the country’s electoral commission doesn’t come anywhere to independent as in Nigeria or Ghana, but the new coalition arrayed against it will certainly have
livened up the competition.

The reality also remains that Lowassa has been a
ruling party insider for decades, and will only be batting from the other side
for the purpose of dislodging CCM.

As such it would add credence to the observation
that coalition politics in Africa are rarely on ideology, whether social or
economic, but for the single-purpose of ascending to power.

In other countries such as Gabon, Burundi,
Ethiopia, South Africa and Rwanda, the ruling party is a coalition behemoth
that sucks up all the political oxygen, co-opting the major
players to retain a strangle-hold on power.